Precarious

The founder and designer of the Alexander McQueen brand was found dead today, sadly his death an apparent suicide. The avant-garde genius is gone. Good or bad, all of our lives are ephemeral. Genius appears to be more so because it dances closer to the edge of the unknown. Often it falters and falls in.

For those of us firmly entrenched on the land, far from the precarious shores of fame and greatness, it's easier to pretend that we are more substantial.

My stepfather, the mortician with the morbid sense of humor, thought it was funny to pick me up from school in a hearse, slathering yet another layer of childhood trauma onto my delicate psyche. "What's the big deal? You're gonna die one day you know." This did nothing to alleviate my irrational fear of death. I now equate my fear of death with my fear of the dark... of the void, of the nothingness. No feeling, no light, no joys or pain. Couldn't live like that but of course I would be dead.

Used to have a bad habit of looking at my reflection compulsively in mirrors, in car windows etc. This was interpreted as evidence of a profound and offensive vanity; this interpretation was only partially true. Seemed more embarrassing to admit that I had not learned the concept of object permanence, had not learned that my physical being was not the sum of my insignificant existence. Mirror or no mirror, I was there. And here I am being a downer.